'Asia literacy' can be loosely defined as having 'some understanding of Asia and its languages in order to engage with it and communicate with its people' (Erebus Consulting Partners, 2002). The Australian Curriculum has prioritised children's development of Asia literacy, specifically through articulating the cross-curriculum priority defined as…

"Yuta Gonydjuy" ("The New Wax") is a children's story written by Kathy Guthadjaka, an Indigenous Elder from Gäwa, Elcho Island, northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Yuta Gonydjuy has been illustrated and published in both Warramiri and English via the bilingual Literature Production Centre at Galiwin'ku, in 1998.…

Literacy teachers in schools and universities share a common goal: to prepare students with the "literacies" they need to succeed in and beyond educational settings. In a "widening-participation" era universities must increase and expand their literacy offerings to help students make the most of their university experiences. At…

While the essay is the default assessment tool of the Humanities in upper secondary and tertiary education, it is a text type that has been slowly bled of communicative purpose. It is suffered by students, taught according to restrictive formula and ignored in the literature. Evidence from the tertiary sector, employers and public examinations…

Manga and anime may no longer be the "new kids" in wider media culture but they are relatively new texts for study in the secondary English classroom. Manga and anime support teachers in their work towards inclusive classroom practices and build multimodal literacies but the cartoony face of the medium belies a depth of analysis required…

I come to this article as an experienced primary and middle years teacher and midcareer university-based academic with a vested interest in researching the message systems of the disciplinary field of subject English. My sociocultural perspective challenges those who view English teaching predominantly as a cognitive act of learning to read or…

This paper suggests how the "weird fiction" of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft's famous monster, as a "Cthulhuic literacy" and is…

Prior scholarship suggests that many boys are disengaged from school-based literacy because they do not see its value or significance in their lives. In response, this study investigates the role of popular culture and new literacies in motivating adolescent boys within secondary English. Drawing on sociocultural approaches to literacy research,…

Aboriginal literacy is a difficult area of education with no neat answer; rather, a multifaceted approach to improving Aboriginal students' outcomes is needed. This article focuses on bringing Aboriginal perspectives and voices into the classroom; using the tools of multiliteracies and scaffolding literacy techniques; and being able to accommodate…

From the original performances of Shakespeare's plays and the illustrated title page of his First Folios, to the current day use of YouTube, mobile phones and tablets, multimodal texts have been apparent across Western cultures. The rapid development over the last 20 years of technology has markedly increased access to a much broader array of…

The comprehension of multimodal texts is now a key concern with the release of the Australian National Curriculum for English (ACARA, 2010). However, the nature of multimodal texts, the diversity of readers in classrooms, and the complex technological environments through which multimodal texts are mediated, requires English teachers to reconsider…